Original text: "Full-Chain Games: New Directions for the Development of Chain Games in 2023"
Author: 0x76
Although the concept of blockchain games was proposed very early, strictly speaking, until the start of the bull market in 2020, it was difficult for the entire encryption industry to single out a representative blockchain game product.
The success of DeFi has inspired other on-chain application developers to a certain extent. Whether it is games or other social tracks, project teams have begun to learn from DeFi. And just as DeFi is composed of "De" which represents decentralization, and "Fi" which later represents finance, the reference to the successful experience of DeFi is actually divided into two completely different directions.
One of the ideas is to integrate token incentives in DeFi to form GameFi, while the other idea is to draw on the decentralized characteristics of DeFi to build a decentralized on-chain game, which is DeGame.
Obviously, in the bull market that has just passed, almost all chain game projects chose the first option, and subsequently derived other derivative concepts such as Play to Earn and even X to Earn. However, the fundamentals remain unchanged. The underlying construction method of such projects is based on a centralized game running on a traditional server, supplemented by a token economic system to incentivize users.
As for DeGame products in another direction of development, although there are very few players, there are also some outstanding and influential representatives. The most typical example is Dark Forest, which has been developing and experimenting with projects in an orderly manner since its establishment in the early 20th century. However, since such projects generally do not issue tokens, there is naturally no room for speculation in the bull market, resulting in a relative lack of attention in other mass markets.
So, between the above two completely different development ideas, which one is more likely to be the future of the blockchain game industry?
Before answering this question, we need to revisit the successful experience of DeFi, which is currently used by all application projects and is almost the only successful application layer product.
Key lessons for DeFi success
First, we need to redefine the scope of DeFi. Broadly speaking, DeFi can include almost all financial products built on the blockchain, including algorithmic stable coins, various derivatives, etc. However, the actual situation is that the DeFi products that truly have intrinsic value and have withstood the long-term test of the market are basically only trading and lending represented by Uniswap and Compound. Therefore, in the following article, we directly use the narrow definition of DeFi, which only includes DEX and lending products that use the AMM mechanism.
The main experience for the success of this type of DeFi project can actually be summarized as the following three points:
1. Due to its relatively decentralized characteristics, users can avoid the asset custody risks of centralized platforms and prevent the platform from misappropriating user funds and running away with money. At the same time, it also breaks the currency listing approval rights of traditional platforms, thus A freer open market is formed;
2. The AMM algorithm and capital pool model greatly reduce the calculation of building financial logic in Ethereum, that is, the gas cost, and improve efficiency;
3. A certain token incentive mechanism accelerates the early popularity of the product;
Therefore, from the above successful experience of DeFi, we can conclude that limiting the power of central nodes to do evil in the past through decentralized technology is the intrinsic value foundation for the long-term existence of Web3 applications. Token incentives are only a catalyst to help early projects achieve greater popularity under the premise that this foundation has been realized.
Why is GameFi struggling to succeed?
If you agree with the conclusion above, then you will find that the current mainstream GameFi products basically have not made any "decentralization" efforts at the product level. In addition to the registration and issuance of tokens and NFTs through the blockchain, GameFi's core business logic is still completely constructed in a centralized manner, and the project party has unrestricted power in the game.
Therefore, for a GameFi project to be successful, it often needs to break through two bottlenecks. First, the project must be game-oriented. If it is difficult to achieve, the project will not be able to generate intrinsic value and will eventually become an idle fund.
Another bottleneck is the team moral hazard that project teams must face when they have centralized power but lack a regulatory environment. Judging from the phenomena we have observed in the past two years, the probability of moral hazard has far exceeded the difficulty of achieving gameplay. This is also the fundamental reason why GameFi games are basically not fun: the team’s impulse to do evil cannot wait until it is developed. Game day.
It is precisely because of the above reasons that many GameFi projects that have emerged in the past two years have basically developed into intentional or unintentional capital disks.
In addition, there is a widespread lie in the narrative surrounding GameFi, which is that the GameFi governance tokens or NFTs held by users can give users ownership of the project or game assets. As for why holding tokens cannot simply be equivalent to ownership, I have already discussed it in detail in my previous article "Does Ownership Really Exist in the Web3 Economy?", so I will not expand on it here.
It is for the above reasons that the development direction of centralized games plus token incentives represented by GameFi is almost destined to fail. In fact, this conclusion was found in the previous article "Play to Earn or Play to Ponzi?" 》 has also been discussed in more detail. Interested readers can click on the link to review.
Now let’s return to the topic of this article. Since the GameFi model often becomes a capital market, what are the unique characteristics of DeGame projects on another development path?
Main features of full-chain games
In fact, there have been many different names in the market for chain gaming projects with decentralization as the main feature. We have always used DeGame to summarize above, more for comparison with another development path, GameFi. But in fact, since these games often deploy their core game logic directly on the chain, the market is more accustomed to calling such projects "full-chain games" or "on-chain games". In the following, we will follow the market’s customary terminology and refer to the projects on the DeGame track as “full-chain games”.
Full-chain games generally have the following obvious characteristics.
openness
Similar to DeFi, which is also deployed on the entire chain, full-chain games naturally have greater openness. The community can freely refer to other ready-made game components that are already on the chain, and even conduct further customized development based on existing games.
We have observed this phenomenon in the community development activities of the famous full-chain game Dark Forest. Similarly, the full-chain game OPCraft, which was recently demonstrated at Devcon in Bogota, also realized the community's customized development of some game functions or components in just two weeks of demonstration time.
In future full-chain games, plug-ins or codes contributed by players or communities will likely become an increasingly important part of these games, and their importance may even surpass that of the official team.
composability
Also benefiting from openness, characters or props between different full-chain games can also be combined with each other like DeFi Lego. This feature is expected to achieve a real breakthrough in blockchain gaming in the future, allowing users to use their own game characters and props across games to achieve future scenarios similar to those in the movie "Ready Player One".
The most representative case of this concept at present may be the NFT project Loot, whose price has basically reached zero (below we just review the two diagrams of the founder of Loot at that time, the core essence of which is actually the composability we are talking about) . But even so, Loot still inspired many successors conceptually. This includes Rarity, which was led by AC and was also unfinished later (I even wrote an analysis article at the time), and Loot Realms, which has been moved to the StarkNet ecosystem and is still under development.
Although these early attempts are hardly successful, their development still allows us to see the potential of full-chain games to achieve certain characteristics that traditional games cannot achieve.
More decentralized
First of all, I need to state that I do not think that applications built using decentralized platforms (including DeFi and full-chain games) are necessarily decentralized. The degree of decentralization of an application does not entirely depend on the development platform it uses, but also depends on its specific business logic.
For example, some DeFi reserves super administrator rights in smart contracts, and project parties can terminate or even modify deployed smart contracts at any time. Although these projects are fully deployed on the chain, their degree of decentralization will still be affected by their specific business logic.
But in general, since the business logic of full-chain games deployed on the public chain is public and verifiable, it is more difficult for project parties to modify the game logic arbitrarily, which can prevent the recurrence of the tragedy of V God’s childhood to a certain extent. This is just like media supervision, although it cannot prevent the occurrence of corruption in an absolute sense, it can still effectively reduce the probability of corruption.
At the same time, full-chain games also solve the problem of game asset custody mentioned above (having currency does not mean having ownership). Since the use value of tokens in full-chain games is directly defined by smart contracts on the chain, the tokens or NFTs held by users can be truly equivalent to the ownership of game equipment or projects.
The development bottleneck of full-chain games
Of course, it is undeniable that apart from the several significant advantages mentioned above, the reason for the slow development of full-chain games is actually very obvious, that is, the computing speed and cost of existing public chains cannot meet the needs of even a small casual game. Computational requirements. This obstacle also caused early development projects in this direction to basically all end in failure.
However, the industry has developed to this day, especially with the gradual maturity of various rollup solutions and the gradual advancement of the Ethereum mainnet upgrade plan. This performance bottleneck that once blocked the development of full-chain games is gradually showing signs of being broken. .
In addition, developers in this direction are also carrying out innovations similar to AMM in DeFi, that is, under the constraints of the performance bottleneck of the existing public chain, through mechanism or technological innovation to reduce the calculation consumption per unit operation, thereby greatly improving the product's performance. operating efficiency. The MUD development architecture we will mention later has the potential to comprehensively improve the efficiency of full-chain game operation or development in the future.
Ecosystems and teams worthy of attention
Currently, two relatively independent communities have been formed in the development of full-chain games. One focuses on game development based on EVM-compatible OP-Rollup, and the other is built directly on the zk-rollup project StarkNet and uses the new Cairo language. Below, we will briefly introduce the teams or communities in these two ecosystems.
StarkNet Ecosystem
StarkNet uses the unique Cairo language, so there may be some barriers to introduction by early developers relative to EVM-compatible scaling solutions. However, as the underlying zk-rollup technology gradually develops and matures, it is expected that StarkNet may enjoy the advantages of faster transaction speeds and lower computing costs in the long term.
At present, there are many full-chain game projects in the StarkNet ecosystem. Although most of them are still in their early stages, their subsequent development deserves continued attention.
MatchboxDAO（Twitter：@matchbox_dao）
MatchboxDAO is more like a professional community focusing on the full chain of games in the StarkNet ecosystem. In addition to sharing relevant information, it will also hold some hackathon events from time to time.
I personally think that what is more valuable at the moment are the articles he has written or reprinted on the theory and cutting-edge practice of full-chain game development. Readers who are interested in this direction can further read its Mirror documentation, where you can also find some cutting-edge experimental projects.
Topology
Topology was originally a game based on the story of the Three-Body Problem. However, since it is still in the early testing stage and there are still many variables in its future development direction, we will not introduce much about the game for the time being.
Personally, I think what’s more noteworthy about this project is the Chinese developer behind it, @guiltygyoza. From his personal blog, we can clearly understand his overall thinking on the full-chain game. The team is currently focusing on developing some experimental games in order to obtain market feedback and iterate faster.
If we follow the methodology of investing in projects is investing in people, Topology may produce some iconic innovations in the future.
Recently they launched an experimental game called MuMu (Chinese name: Nono). Interested readers can click on the link to experience it.
Sparkle
Briq is an on-chain Lego built on StarkNet. Its advantage is that basically all information is stored on the chain. Therefore, it is expected that in the future, it can rely on the openness of full-chain games to build some different usage scenarios.
But the problem is also obvious. For such a component-level product, other game communities will inevitably need to develop various specific usage plans for it. This is still difficult to achieve in the StarkNet ecosystem, which is still in its early stages. Therefore, its current business model still relies on selling NFT products based on future expectations. The subsequent development of this project is worthy of attention, but it is still too early to actually generate actual value.
EVM Ecosystem
Compared with the StarkNet ecosystem, the current full-chain game ecosystem, which is mainly developed based on Optimism or other EVM-compatible architectures, appears to be more mature. In particular, the Lattice team’s public demonstration at Devcon in Bogotá some time ago also won a lot of attention for related projects.
Lattice
Lattice is a full-chain game development team, but unlike many other game developers, the Lattice team first developed a full-chain game development framework MUD (the future use scenarios of this framework may not be limited to full-chain games).
Simply put, MUD can be understood as a developer framework (Framework). As shown in the figure below, more abstract underlying development tools will likely support more complex on-chain applications. AW (Autonomous World) in the vertical axis represents the autonomous world, which is a concept used to refer to full-chain games. Interested readers can refer to this demo video for a more detailed explanation of the MUD framework.
Of course, readers with non-technical backgrounds can more intuitively understand its importance by experiencing game products developed relying on MUD. Among them is the on-chain version of the Minecraft game: OPCraft, which was previously demonstrated live at Devcon in Bogota and caused a great response.
The game form of OPCraft basically replicates the game form of the famous MineCraft, so it doesn't need much introduction. More importantly, the player’s modification or construction information of the virtual world is stored on the chain. We can still use this link to learn about the objects or images created by the players who participated in the experience in Bogota at that time. The future potential of MUD game engines and full-chain games is evident.
0xPARC
0xPARC is a research organization established by Gubsheep, the founder of the famous full-chain game project Dark Forest (for the background of Gubsheep, you can read the article (Chinese translation)). It is currently mainly focused on the cutting-edge progress of full-chain games, and is also mentioned above Funder of the Lattice project.
Of course, strictly speaking, 0xPARC is not a pure game development team, and its research and funding directions are not limited to the game field. However, 0xPARC currently supports many cutting-edge exploratory full-chain game projects, including the Autonomous Worlds Residency: Demo Day event that was publicly demonstrated not long ago (mainly full-chain game-related projects).
Therefore, the events held by 0xPARC or the blogs published can be used as a window to understand the latest developments in the entire chain of games.
It can be seen that the projects or organizations mentioned above are basically in the early stage of theoretical construction or the development of underlying technologies. The full-chain game products launched at this stage are often only of testing nature, and the products are still very immature. But if you carefully understand the vision or values of the teams behind these projects, you can find that they tend to have a more long-term spirit and have in-depth thinking about the direction they are engaged in (specifically, they write more articles than they can play LoL games). .
It is still difficult to answer whether future full-chain games will become DeFi in the next bull market, and whether they will finally usher in their own "AMM moment." But if you want to look for application layer segmentation tracks that are likely to produce breakthroughs in the next cycle in a bear market, then the current full-chain games may be an area worth paying attention to.